CONSTRUCTION OF GOVERNMENT OFFICE BUILDINGS ...

3.11 The Government Property Administrator has said that:
(a)
she generally accepts the audit recommendations as mentioned in paragraph 3.9 above;
(b)
under the design-and-build contract used for the construction of government office
buildings, departments are advised by the GPA of the critical date after which changes to
the internal fitting-out requirements are prohibited; and
(c)
she will consider how best to amend the Accommodation Regulations to address the audit
recommendations.
3.12 The Director of Health has said that:
(a)
in early 1997, when the DH was informed of the idea of engaging private medical
practitioners for pre-employment medical examinations for trading fund departments,
there was no proposal of outsourcing the medical examination services for non-trading
fund government departments;
(b)
in January 1999, the CSB wrote to seek the DH’s view on the proposal of extending the
outsourcing of the medical examination services to government departments. The CSB
invited the DH to exchange views on the proposal. At the meeting of July 1999, the
CSB, the FB, the DH and the GSD discussed the idea of allowing government
departments to engage private medical practitioners to conduct medical examinations for
recruitment to the civil service. While the DH had no in-principle objection to the idea,
it did not see any changes in policy to totally outsource the medical examination services;
and
(c)
it was not until September 1999 that the DH noted that the CSB had accepted the FB’s
suggestion of implementing the outsourcing proposal on a full-scale basis. As the DH
only acted as an agent for the CSB in providing pre-employment medical examination
services, the DH could then start to make changes after policy approval had been given.
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